James Hetfield Cast in Movie About Serial Killer Ted Bundy

Metallica frontman James Hetfield will share the screen with former teen heartthrob Zac Efron in the upcoming Ted Bundy movie Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile.

Joe Berlinger, who co-produced and directed Metallica: Some Kind of Monster and wrote Metallica: This Monster Lives, will helm the Voltage Pictures production that also stars Lily Collins, John Malkovich, Jim Parsons and Haley Joel Osment.

The film follows the relationship between serial killer Ted Bundy (played by Efron) and his girlfriend (Collins), who had no knowledge of his crimes at the time. Hetfield will play Bob Hayward, the veteran Utah Highway Patrolman who was the first officer to arrest Bundy in 1975, after pulling him over and discovering burglary tools in his car.

While Hetfield has appeared on TV and in movies as himself, this is his first acting role. “Having spent hundreds of hours behind the scenes with James and the rest of Metallica, I have experienced his charisma and powerful presence close up,” Berlinger said in a statement. “It seemed only natural that he would bring that same power and magnetism to a dramatic role, so when he agreed to my pitch that he be in the movie, I was thrilled.”

Hetfield is currently on the road with Metallica on their WorldWired tour. The band was recently nominated for Grammy Awards in the Best Rock Album and Best Song categories for their November 2017 release, Hardwired ... to Self-Destructand "Atlas, Rise!" but lost to the War on Drugs and Foo Fighters, respectively.

UPDATE: Berlinger has shared a picture of Hetfield in costume to his Instagram account. He noted that Hetfield was "clean-cut" and that "[h]aving one of my musical heroes in our film is pretty damn awesome."